A shakeup at Condé Nast highlights the disruptive impact Facebook and Google are having on legacy media brands — and how they're trying to adapt

Condé Nast announced its CEO Bob Sauerberg is out and that
it's combining its separate US and international arms while
looking for a new CEO with global experience.

The move had been expected as the US arm lost a reported $120
million in 2017, and the company is looking for operational
efficiencies with the faster-growing overseas business.

The shakeup shows how the rise of Google and Facebook as
international platforms has forced traditional media companies to
adapt.

Condé Nast is chucking its CEO Bob Sauerberg and combining its
separate US and international arms while starting an outside
search for a new CEO with global experience.

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"Looking forward, the shift to one global company will help us
realize our ambition to deliver the highest quality journalism,
experiences and value to our audiences, advertisers and partners
on all platforms," family operators Jonathan Newhouse and Steven
Newhouse said in a statement on behalf of the family-owned Condé
Nast board of directors.

They added that the shift would allow the company "to more
quickly transform ourselves to address their evolving needs and
by enhancing the collaboration between colleagues around the
world."

Combining US and international operations have cost-saving
advantages, and Condé Nast is on the hunt to eliminate a reported
$120 million in losses last year. But the rise of Google and
Facebook has also pushed traditional media companies to maximize
the scale of their own audiences.

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"What all these media companies are looking at more so than ever
in a Google-Facebook duopoly is, how do we get greater scale and
greater efficiency," said Steve Rubel, chief media ecologist at
Edelman.

That's in part what led rival publisher Hearst Magazines to merge
its US and international operations two years ago. The former
Time Inc. titles similarly integrated their domestic and overseas
businesses in 2016, before Meredith Corp. acquired the company
this year.

And in the past few months, Condé Nast formed a new creative
agency with the goal of working on events and other
nontraditional ad formats for clients globally. It merged the US
and UK editorial staffs of Condé Nast Traveler and brought its US
and overseas tech and product leads closer together.

Having a centralized editorial strategy and shared publishing
platform can help global publishers to see what's trending across
their various markets and easily share articles across them.
Condé Nast is heavy in fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content
that lends itself well to being shared across markets.

Rubel said on the ad sales side, publishers also are looking to
harness their first-party customer data as a selling point versus
Google and Facebook. Having a combined global operation can make
it easier to use that data for the benefit of advertisers looking
to buy across markets. Having strong consumer data can also give
media companies a leg up with direct-to-consumer advertisers
whose business is based on having intimate knowledge of their
customers.

Insiders expect that the Condé Nast Traveler consolidation will
serve as a template to centralize editorial production at other
titles at the company. Condé Nast International already
centralized its September fashion show coverage out of London
earlier this year, for example. The company has been rolling out
a common content-management system called Copilot across its
titles that makes it easier to share and publish editorial and ad
content across markets.

Condé Nast has its work cut out for it, though. It's already made
deep cuts at some titles and put others up for sale as efforts to
drive video and reader revenue haven't offset declines in print
advertising. And it's had a long-siloed culture that will make it
hard to get different parts of the organization working together.